Remember the Fallen

It's been seven years. In that time, I met and married my wife and had my first child. I've lost some grandparents and some friends. I'm still driving the same truck and going to the same job, but many of my co-workers can't say the same because of lay-offs.

We set off to route out the Taliban from Afghanistan, then attacked Iraq for no publicly-discernible reason. While losing over four thousand men and women, billions of dollars, and thousands of limbs, we've all but forgot those that attacked us. Those that are still out there, planning.

We owe it to the people lost on that day to keep America the shining promise that it was when we were attacked. Guarding our own civil liberties, guaranteeing rights to those we charge with crimes, protecting those who are under attack for no other reason than being there. These are all traits that America can admire in herself, even if some of the occupants resent them.

We need to stand up for ourselves and for our nation. We need to echo Barack Obama's call that "Enough is enough!" We've been swindled of our hopes and dreams, money and security, friends and family. This administration has taken it all for their own needs, and they weren't altruistic ones.

Raise your voice to those that must hear it. Demand that news companies once again produce journalism. Push yourself to read and understand, if you don't yet. Take an interest in the world around you besides your own. Inform the President that you DO NOT APPROVE of his actions, and of his failures to act. Volunteer for your local Obama or other Democratic candidate's campaign office. These are only some of what you can do to help remember the fallen.

Bush Strategy for Success in Iraq

I've had an epiphany; it came to me while watching Real Time with Bill Maher on YouTube. They were discussing, in rapid succession, many topics ranging from religion to global warming to elections to Iraq. Then it hit me: Bush's plan for success in Iraq is global warming! Look at the facts:

• Bush denies global warming exists.
  Let's assume that it is indeed his plan. Wouldn't he want to keep his winning strategy a secret? The best way to maintain the secrecy is to deny its existence.
• Iraq is very hot.
  Being a desert country, Iraq has recorded some of the Earth's hottest temperatures. If it were bumped up a little, it could very well cause rampant death and destruction in the region.
• Much of Iraq has inconsistent electricity.
  Due to contractor graft, incompetence, and/or stupidity, many of the electrical plants in Iraq are still operating at Shock And Awe^® levels. This means that there won't be nearly the requisite amount of available power to maintain air conditioners when the temperatures go up. There will be virtually no safe place to cower from the heat.
• Bush is accelerating the effects of global warming.
  Through both his regressive domestic agendas and his refusal to update (or even enforce) pollution and efficiency standards, Bush is in effect quickening the effects of global warming. This is being done as a way to accelerate his Operation: Infinite Temperatures initiative.

All in all, it is an ingenious plan. In only a few short decades, the residents insurgents of Iraq should just topple over from heatstroke. Of course, so will the residents of Phoenix, Las Vegas, Silicon Valley, El Paso, Salt Lake City, and Kennebunkport. Sorry 'bout that.

I've identified the problem...

Press Secretary Tony Snow on White House Staff (5/15/07):

The fact is if you take a look at personnel throughout the administration, we actually have... continue to recruit first grade people for this administration. –C-SPAN 5/15/07

The problems that we are seeing with the Dubya Administration, the problems of not cooperating with others, of being bossy and stubborn, of not listening to authority figures, these are all of them symptoms of hiring First Graders! Perhaps they should raise the bar a tad.

Maybe the Shell-Shock is Real

For the first time, I think I actually believe President Bush on something: He truly didn't expect to take a "thumpin" on Election Day. I've mentioned in earlier posts how there seemed to be a lack of a Plan B of any kind, and I've had trouble believing that such consummate professional politicians would be that careless. I mean, anyone who's ever heard of the phrase "Gallup Poll" would have known that Democrats were leading in the double-digits across most races. Only an ostrich-esk force of will to shove your head underground would have prevented the somewhat obvious possibility of loss to enter one's mind. I think I've come up with a viable hypothesis as to why exactly this occurred: Plans to rig the election failed.

Think about it: What were some of the first stories you heard Tuesday morning? There were stories and stories of electronic voting machines not coming online and poll-workers were having to resort to using paper ballots. Let's assume that you're a crooked politician that has gone through lots of trouble to fix an election using tampered electronic voting machines. How well would you fare if those machines were bypassed altogether?

And yes, I think that some tampering was present. In this CNN article, poll workers are quoted as saying "The company that made the machines said the PIN numbers were wrong on the cards needed to activate the machines," and while I don't know these machines specifically, I imagine that swapping out a memory card might affect the associated PIN value.

Heckuva Job, part 2

This turned out to be longer than I anticipated, so rather than posting as a comment, I'm making another entry for today. Here I list relevant portions of the Q&A session President Bush had today with reporters about letting Rumsfeld go.

Reporter: Last week you told us that Secretary Rumsfeld would be staying on. Why is the timing right now for [accepting the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld]? And how much does it have to do with the election results?

President Bush: Right.

No, you and [wire service reporters Terence] Hunt and Kyle came in the Oval Office and you asked — Hunt asked me the question one week before the campaign, and basically it was: You going to do something about Rumsfeld and the vice president? And my answer was, you know, they're going to stay on.

And the reason why is I didn't want to inject a major decision about this war in the final days of a campaign.

And so the only way to answer that question and to get you onto another question was to give you that answer. [emphasis is mine]

The truth of the matter is, as well -- I mean, that's one reason I gave the answer. But the other reason why is I hadn't had a chance to visit with Bob Gates yet, and I hadn't had my final conversation with Don Rumsfeld yet, at that point.

[Backpeddling at realization of admission to lies]

Later in the Q&A session, the President decides to add more onto his earlier response, and adds the following:

President Bush: And secondly, I hadn't visited with Bob Gates. I told you, I visited with him last Sunday in Crawford. You can't replace somebody until you know you've got somebody to replace him with. And, finally, I hadn't had my last conversation with Secretary Rumsfeld, which I had yesterday.

So, it seems that President Bush was eager to replace Secretary Rumsfeld, he just needed to find the right person for the job, right? If that's true, here's a question for you: Since Republican leaders were urging the President to remove Secretary Rumsfeld from his position, and he was planning to do just this, why not tell everyone in a press release as this would surely help his party in the election yesterday. My hypothesis: President Bush only decided to replace Secretary Rumsfeld after the election results were clear, contrary to what he stated today.

Kerry's Botched Joke

I'm actually quite surprised that the Republicans went crazy with this one considering that they've had six years experience with someone that routinely mangles sentences.

• ...fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.
• Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?
• We ought to make the pie higher.
• I will have a foreign-handed foreign policy.
• Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream.
• If I'm the president, we're going to have emergency-room care, we're going to have gag orders.

I'm sure you all recognize the speaker of these quotations. Unless President Bush intends to leviate fruit-filled pastries, I believe there's a precedent for allowing a little leeway with foot-in-mouth disease when non-comedians try too hard to deliver a punchline.

Rummy, You're Doing a Heckuva Job

Now get out

President Bush just concluded his press conference in which he announced that he'd be accepting the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense. During the question and answer session, he let something rather interesting slip. When asked about comments made during an interview with some reporters within the Oval Office, he admitted to lying to them, just to get them to change the subject. I can't post exact quotes yet, as no one has posted the transcripts so soon after the press conference, but I will attach them to this post as a comment when they become available.

To paraphrase, he was asked about comments made earlier about whether he'd keep Rumsfeld on staff, and the President replied not only in the affirmative, but that Rumsfeld would retain his Office for as long as President Bush did. Elsewhere in the Q&A, Bush claimed that he was planning, at that same time, to interview Bob Gates for Rummy's position. Seems to me that that was a good place for a "No comment" or Bush's trademark shrug-off of the question, not to lie (and in hyperbole, no less).

My opinion is that Bush never planned to talk to Bob Gates, and in fact hadn't talked to Bob Gates, until today, the 8th, after the election result were clear. Another admission of President Bush was that he did no anticipate any midterm losses for his party, so it stands to reason that he never anticipated letting Rummy leave until it became apparent that they did lose seats. Many seats.

Rumsfeld himself had made comments last week that he would stay in his appointment (one assumes he also meant as long as it pleases the President) even if the Democrats swept Congress during the midterms. Then why did he resign before the results were even confirmed? Were his statements merely an attempt to persuade liberal voters to stay home, to make them think that even a historic turnout wouldn't persuade the Administration to change their course? Or was it simply arrogance on his part, and his firm (yet incorrect) belief that the Republicans would continue to control Congress, as they done for the last twelve years.

In my opinion, all of this smacks of not only arrogance, but a complete lack of an ability to formulate a "Plan B". A wise politician (truthfully, any wise person) should plan ahead for the unfortunate. I think what we see here is that there were no plans for if they lost the election, just as there were no plans for if civil war erupted in Iraq, or if a massive hurricane slammed New Orleans, or any of the dozens of Administration failures over the last six years.

Safety Last

Here's a fun conversation that I've been having with Republicans for the last few years. I say something like, "The President lied about why he went to war with Iraq. How can you defend him after you tried to crucify Clinton for lying?" They say, "We went to war to remove an evil dictator who was tormenting his people." I reply, "that's not the reason I heard back in 2003." They ignore that and attack me with, "Don't you think we're safer now that that madman is in custody?" (to which I think to myself "What do you mean, he's still the President...")

For years, I would just sit there staring at them, scratching my head as to how they can flip-flop rationale without even noticing. I'd just stop talking about it because it's not nice to argue with your siblings at the holiday dinner table. It occurs to me though, that we aren't safer. Seriously, how are we safer? The madman (Saddam, not the other one) may be out of power, but all that did was create a void. That madman, evil as he is, was keeping religion out of his government (You can tell I mean Saddam here, as the other one isn't keeping religion out of the government).

Now that there's a democracy (another of the famous flip-flopped rationale for invading, yes invading, Iraq), the people of Iraq are trying to vote into power a theocracy. Well, sure, they're allowed to do that. It's their country. If we're honest with ourselves, we have to let them do that if it's what they want. But guess what? It's not what we wanted. Name for me all of the Muslim theocracies. Now how do those countries on your list feel about the United States? Are those flowers and sweets I smell? Probably not.

All we've managed to do is to foment legitimate anger against the U.S. in Iraq. A country, by the way, that had nothing to do with attacking U.S. soil, ever. Not on 9/11, not ever. Now, instead of a dictator oppressing his people, we have terrorist training camps throughout the region gunning for U.S. soldiers. This is not an improvement for us, folks. We are not safer now! Your rhetoric is flawed; having Saddam out of power is not safer for us, the U.S. people. So, examine your facts, turn off Faux News, and pass the potatoes.

Second verse, same as the first!

So once again the President's reputation is pulled from the fire, at least on paper. Just like with the Harriet Miers nomination, Dubai Ports World has ended the controversy by withdrawing their desire to run the USA-based ports. This ends all of the arguments, investigations, and bad press. I guess my question is: Why? Now they got me curious. I wonder what kind of ties we would have found if we were to investigate. Why was the President even interested in this? Not just interested, but down right adamant. He seemed willing to break the law to push this sale through (and yes, it would have been illegal without the mandatory 45-day investigation), so I wonder if he stood to benefit directly from the transfer...

The President fakes a hand-off...

Okay, I'm reading my latest missive from the DSCC as they describe the voting habits of Senator Jon Kyl (R-Arizona). Apparently, he votes with the President about 96% of the time. The line that got me thinking is where Anne Lewis, the letter's author, says that "he's found a politically convenient issue [and] this right-wing Republican Senator is proudly touting his independent credentials." The issue? The sale of management of U.S. Ports to UAE-based UAE-controlled Dubai Ports World.

Everyone seems like they're opposed to this one, everyone except the Administration. Republicans and Democrats alike are lambasting the Executive Branch, though to varying degrees, about how wrong this is. Here's a crazy thought: What if the President intended to give his party members a rally flag? Think about it. If it passes, then the President's friends in the UAE get their lucrative contracts and Georgie's off to think up something else. But, if the people don't like this idea, and clearly they don't, the President gives his party something better than coattails on which to coast through the mid-term elections. For a President whose coattails are rather unclean, he gives them a non-issue that his party can oppose vehemently, without really getting in any trouble over it.

Now this might be read as a cry out for all of the conspiracy theorists to unite, but I'm honestly just trying to think outside the box a little here. The public is upset about Katrina. The public is upset about the Iraq War. The public is upset about George. Who wants to be seen with him right now? Nobody. Why not find an issue that you can go either way on, and then make an arbitrary stand on it? This gives your teammates the perfect opportunity to say "I'm an independent thinker, and this is wrong. Vote for me and I'll fix it. I'll get us back on track!" This kind of idea brings all of the middle-of-the-roaders of the Republican Party back to their guy. Of course it gives the Dems something to scream about, but they're always screaming about something, right? Only because we have to.

I'm not saying that he officiated the deal, or even asked the U.K. company sell it to the Saudis, but I think that Mr. Rove is keen enough to see a good thing when he sees it. Assume your looking for some issue that you don't care about, but want to make a stand. Wouldn't just about anything work for you? Maybe you'd even try to appoint your personal attorney to the Supreme Court, just for shits and grins.